Randy Howell Wins 2014 Bassmaster Classic

A huge final day made Randy Howell the 2014 Bassmaster Classic winner.

Randy Howell, a 40-year-old from Springville, Alabama, just an hour and a half’s drive from Guntersville Lake, has won the 2014 Bassmaster Classic with a 29-pound, 2-ounce haul; one in particular weighed 7-3.

“I’ve had this dream so many times, and it’s happening now. I can’t believe I won the Bassmaster Classic. I don’t win tournaments very often,” Howell told Bassmaster.com. This marks his third overall Bassmaster tour win, and his first Classic. He fished the Spring Creek area of Lake Guntersville, an Alabama lake he was more than familiar with.

Howell brings home the $300,000 grand prize and a position in the annals of professional bass fishing as the 2014 Bassmaster Classic champion. Paul Mueller, a B.A.S.S. Nation qualifier, took second place and trailed by a pound. Edwin Evers, the leader after Day 2, ended up in third.

The winning day, epic even among professional angling, gave Howell a good vibe from the start. He told Bassmaster.com that he caught a keeper on his second or third cast, and had a limit in the first 10 or 15 minutes. He found himself culling 4-pounders in no time, and the biggest, the 7-3 monster mentioned earlier, was the fourth fish he caught on Sunday.

Many recreational anglers are curious as to what lures won the Bassmaster Classic champion his title, and Howell was reportedly using a medium diver Livingston Lures model (in a crawfish color) that’s not yet available to the public. He was also casting a Rapala DT6 crankbait and a Yamamoto bladed jig.

“I went out this morning believing I could win,” Howell said after the weigh-in. “That’s the weirdest thing. Typically, I would never be in 11th place and 9 pounds back and think I had a chance to win. But for some reason I had the feeling I could win on Spring Creek — that something big would happen there.”

As is customary, the Bassmaster Classic will be available to watch on ESPN2 in a week, on Saturday, March 1 at 10:00 a.m. E.T. Twelve total hours of Bassmaster footage will be aired, with the finale highlighting Sunday’s championship and weigh-in from 8:00 to 10:00p.m. E.T. on Sunday, March 2.